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THE UNION MUST BE PRESERVED! 



FOUR CRISIS LETTERS 




TO TKK' 



I. A- D I E S 



PEOPOSING THE SPEEDY FORMATION 



MARTHA WASHI?JGTOI SOCIETY.. 



PUBLISHED BY FRIENDS OF THE MOYEMEWT. 

NOTICE. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, who wish to help circulate these Letters at their own 
expense, may send their orders to 

JOHN H. DUYCKINCK, PRINTER, 

Steam Power Presses, 

164 Pearl Street, New-York. 



A FEW CRISIS LETTERS 



TO THE LADIES. 



NUMBER ONE. 



That the present crisis originates with Domestic Affairs is 
obvious. A close investigation of them shows that about one 
liundred cases concerning bond negro nurses and chambermaids, 
or servants, are the sole cause, that the existence of our power- 
ful government is in jeopardy. This seems to be incredible ; 
still it is true. It is further obvious that this calamity can be 
only averted by the intercession or mediation of American 
women ; and this may appear also incredible, but is neverthe- 
less true. The reason is that without this intercession the case 
never will be dispassionately and minutely sifted. Ladies and 
mothers of families will consider the case from a strict domestic 
view, because they understand the domestic institutions and af- 
fairs best, while the politicians consider the case from a political 
view — the onl}^ one they know — which is here the wrong one, 
and will fail. Ladies will deal with the servants in question, 
while gentlemen deal with generalities and abstractions. 

We say that about one hundred cases concerning bond serv- 
ants are at the bottom of a crisis, which by many is described as 
one of the most disastrous crises we ever witnessed. If the 
ladies can terminate it, they should try to earn the merit. Our 
Union is the first best we have. l!^ow how is that ? 

Tliere are three sides of this hond servant trouble. One is, 
that some Northern States have enacted laws which declare that 
all bond servants brought, under whatever pretence, from the 
South to the North, shall be free. (The New York State law is 
contained in part 1, chapter xx, title 7, section 1, of the Stat.) 

When can such a law be operative ? This question will con- 
cern, above all, ladies. They well know that they, especially, 



are, when traveling JSTorth in search of health, perhaps accom- 
panied by children, obliged to stay for awhile at Saratoga or 
Newport, or other towns, and in need of their own trusty nurses, 
and this is a part of domestic comfort only duly appreciated by 
ladies. The pleasure seekers do not burden themselves with 
such appendages. Xow suppose that, as the feelings North are 
about such servants, twenty-live such cases happen annually ; 
then we get for this kind of laws, in this great nation of thirty- 
two millions, about twenty cases to operate upon, and to expose 
those poor traveling ladies or families to the loss of their trusty 
nurses, either by the direct action of those laws, if gentlemen (I) 
should be found to execute them, or by their indirect influence 
upon mobs, who act as executors. We say again, that nobody 
than ladies, mothers of families, housekeepers, can appreciate 
this domestic afl'air well ; those South feel it mostly, and those 
North know the value of trusty nurses alone. "Well known cii-- 
cumstances connected with the late Presidential election, now 
entirely concluded — we have delayed the publication of these 
letters so long — have given vent to the irritated feelings of our 
Southern friends, which run so high that they rather will eecede 
from the Union than submit to such unchiyalrous laws in this 
Union longer. Ladies, of course, will not trouble themselves 
with the constitutionality of such laws, they only will consider 
them from a charitable and humane view ; and if they will find 
out that they are improper, and that it is absurd to disturb the 
peace of the country on account of twenty-live bond nurses, more 
or less, a word from them, at the right time, and to the right 
men, and these obnoxious laws will be repealed. According to 
all aspects, the incoming administration M'ill be impossible, if 
this should not happen witliout delay. 



NUMBER TWO. 

The ladies will be so kind as to examine, in their own practi- 
cal careful manner, another domestic affair, which has caused 
for years much irritation, and even riots and bloodshed, and is a 
principal cause of the present calamitous crisis. A supposed 
case will explain the matter easiest, A planter in Georgia has 
a son, who washes to establish himself, say as surveyor, in one of 
our territories. He has a young wife, who is perfectly willing 
to follow him into the wilderness, provided she can take her own 
faithful old bond servant nurse with her, both being attached 
sincerely to each other. But, according to the creed or platform 
of a certain party, even armed for the purpose of carrying out 
that creed, it cannot be done. Now, how many such bond 
servant or nurse cases may probably occur in all the territories ? 
Perhaps not more than twenty -five, not counting such cases 
where bond servants may have been thrust into territories (as in 
Kansas may have happened) for political party purposes, be- 
cause no good bond servant will, under prevailing circumstances, 
be brought voluntarily into a territory, for fear of losing him as 
may be easily imagined. No planter will remove a bond man 
from the cotton, rice, or tobacco fields South, to the potato fields 
out West ! It would not pay, as the homely phrase is. It is 
further obvious, that unmarried men emigrating to territories, 
will dispense with servants. Thus the burden of this opposition 
of, and political meddling with, simple, domestic, housekeeping 
affaii's, must again fall upon families, and especially poor women. 
Our Southern friends complain of it bitterly, and make it — as all 
papers are announcing daily — even a cause for secession from 
the Union. 

Thus the ladies will see again, that a few harmless chamber- 
maid or nursery cases, affecting their comfort, and discomforting 
nobody in the world, and which are rather calculated to promote 
the speedy settlement of the wild land by families, the most de- 
sirable for civilization, commerce, or industry — that a few bond 
chambermaids, we say, are again the cause that this grand con- 
federation, the wonder of the world, is about to be broken up, 
and at the verge of civil war and general bankruptcy. It is in- 
credible, but, alas! too true ! 



Similar triflings have before brought ruin to republics and 
empires. That little Belgium has been separated from the 
Netherland, is owing to a trifling arbitrary toll levied on oxen, 
brought by the drovers to Brussels. The drovers resisted ; the 
populace, already excited by priests and demagogues against 
Holland, joined them ; a general upheaving and war followed ; 
and, after a tedious, ruinous crisis, Belgium was separated and 
organized as a kingdom. Both insignificant states are now at 
the mercy of their powerful neighbors. Do we intend to imitate 
that Dutch oxen revolution ? Our fair read(!rs know the history 
of the American Revolution too well, to be in need of remind- 
ing them of its proximate cause, a trifling, but arbitrary tax. 
Shall we split our Union on account of a few domestics, bond or 
not bond? the like have existed since centuries in the land. 
Shall thirty-two millions of people be plunged in misery, and 
God knows what calamities, for that reason ? 

Is there anything arbitrary or unjust in the case of the sur- 
veyor's lady mentioned before f Is not the bond nurse, in a 
common territory of the States, as legitimate a nurse as in a 
sinde State ? Is it not folly to interfere with sucli transient do- 
mestic things ? The American ladies know their domestic rights 
and privileges w^ell ; they cannot be passive lookers on in such 
things and times. They are called upon by all that is dear to 
them in their homes, to use their influence so omnipotent in do- 
mestic affairs to make an end of that unpractical, useless, galling 
and withal unconstitutional free soil, abolitionist opposition in 
territories. If this intercession should not be successful, an im- 
possible thing if well done, the new administration will never 
come in a working order, and the confederation among tlie 
things that were. 



NUMBER THREE. 

We arrive now at the most prolilic cause of a deep dissatisfactiou 
of the South with the North, viz: the great organized opposition 
Nortli against the execution of that clause of the Federal Con- 
stitution, which ordains that the fugitives from labor shall be 
restored to their masters when claimed. Honest, religious, good 
citizens, invariably are such who obey the laws. T]ie law in 
(pestion is a self-necessity. No confederation like ours can be 
without one. Even the mere apology of such a confederated 
government, viz : the venerable Puritan United Colonies of New 
England, (Massachusetts, New Plymoutli, Connecticut and New 
Haven,) established in 10^3, had one almost literally like that 
prescribed in the Federal Constitution. And if this ConstitutioTi 
should not contain it, all our courts applied to for the restitution 
of fugitives from labor, whether bondmen, or sailors or others, are 
bound by the general principles of justice in a confederation to 
grant the application. Our governments are not appointed to 
break private obligations, but to realize, if called upon, their 
fulfilment. It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of 
such fugitives from the South, who may annually voluntarily, 
i. e. without being seduced by the abolitionists, leave their homes 
without the permission of their masters. But as the negro loves, 
generally, his southern home better than any other, it can be 
but small, perhaps not over fifty. The organized opposition 
against the execution of this law, even supported by express 
legislation of several Northern States, is a flagrant violation of 
the Federal Constitution and laws, and is one of the principal 
causes for secession of the Southern States from the Union. 

So the fair readers of these Wnes will again learn that another 
trouble about a few domestics is at the bottom of the present 
calamitous crisis and general stagnation of confidence, credit and 
business. A few restless bond servants, who, if they choose, 
may always obtain a peaceable dismission from service — for there 
are, according to the census, annually, four thousand bondmen 
manumitted in the South, voluntariiy — are about to demolish the 
great work of George Washington, indirectly. And if they 
come to those States who have enacted personal liberty lawB, 
what awaits them ? The flat refusal of a home, the denegfttibn 



8 

of voting rights — a slate of bondage so truly insulting and gall- 
ing as never is their condition in the South; many of those out- 
casts return, therefore, to the South. 

Mothers of families know too Avell that our country is the 
paradise of domestics and not of house-keepers. They alone are 
able to appreciate justly the feelings of our Southern friends, 
who [are, like a beleaguered fortress, surrounded by organized 
bands of abolitionists, and visited by enemies of their domestic 
})eace and institutions, under all kinds of disguises, stirring their 
bond servants up to disobedience, rebellion and murder ! They 
alone can realize the truth wholly that society in the South can- 
not exist in a civilized state, if the four millions of negroes are 
not kept, as at present, organized for labor. Mothers of house- 
liolds know best how provoking and annoying it is to lose ser- 
vants by intermeddlers or eavesdroppers. They alone are able 
to sympathize with the families in the South in their perilous 
situation. And, therefore, it is their sacred duty to do all in 
their power to allay the alarm of our Southern friends about the 
election of a gentleman as President with abolition proclivities. 

We repeat it, without the gentle but most energetic and uni- 
versal intercession of the ladies, our Union is gone. Partizans 
cannot prevent that, Congress cannot do it, not the amending of 
the Federal Constitution is needed, but its faithful execution. 
Men who are banded together to defeat this most excellent law, 
as it is at present, will continue this rebellious course when 
amended. 'Tis easy to destroy, but difficult to create. We 
repeat again, that the incoming administration is an impossi- 
bility, without its total separation from abolitionism. Every 
good^ citizen, on whatever party,grounds he stand — the writer 
of these lines has not voted for Mr. Lincoln — is bound to help 
that his administration gets in perfect workiug order. How that 
can be done is already apparent from these letters, and will be- 
come clearer in the next and last letter. We beg expressly, and 
most respectfully, not to indulge in any hope that Congress can 
avert or help the crisis. This illusion may do irreparable injury 
to the country. Tlie President has intimated the same in his 
Message expressly. Congress, as the national government, got 
no power to legislate on domestics anywhere, or to restrain 
abolitionists, or demagogues in the several States from arrogant 
intermeddling witli other people's business. 



NUMBER FOUR. 

The fair readers will now be anxious to know what they shall 
do for the country and Union. The answer is : To form, for 
prompt action, a grand imposing society, extending all over the 
country, for the main purpose of promoting conciliation and 
harmony, by discountenancing all anti-slavery agitation by the 
abolitionists and others, in the pulpit, lectures, prints, etc. This 
may be done by personal intercession and remonstrance, and by 
petitions, correspondence, and a thousand gentle but determined 
means, calculated to convince our Southern confederated friends 
that the IS^ortli means to make the Constitution a truth, keep it 
faithfully, and will stop all intermeddling with their domestic 
affairs. This, by itself, will and must lead to a speedy termina- 
tion of the disastrous crisis and all secession trouble, and open 
the door to the "White House to Mr. Lincoln. 

For it is Africa — SAM-bo, not uncle Sam — who causes, origi- 
nally, the trouble, although innocently, because designing men 
use him for making political capital. This the ladies should bear 
in mind. It requires no persuasion to make any of them, who, 
as mothers of families, have only a few years' experience in house- 
keeping, believe that it is impossible to abolish the bond labor 
of four millions of negroes South, otherwise than by the almighty, 
gradual, but sure, agency of time. Bond labor, usually called 
slavery, is as little an absolute evil or a shame to the country as 
free labor. Man must labor. The negro was created to live and 
labor in the South. To keep him, usefully for him and the world, 
employed, the brains of the white man, created to labor in the 
temperate regions, must organize his labor, just as it is done 
North. 

Sentameutalists and abstractionists do not understand this 
natural order of labor, but ladies comprehend it, because they 
are the organizers of domestic labor and thoroughly acquainted 
with its system and detail. We are often in the necessity of ex- 
plaining this to Europeans who have no experience in Southern 
labor, coming, as they do, from temperate regions, inhabited by 
one race, while the United States are peopled by four distinct 
races — (Americans, Indians, Negroes, Mongols.) Bond labor in 
the South is a stern, necessity. The North is not the judge of 



10 

the South. If slavery is an evil, the responsibility is with the 
South where it exists, and not with the North, where there are 
no slaves. Liberty has nothing to do with labor, bond or free. 
Liberty is nothing but freedom of subjection, (as of the English, 
Austrians, etc.,) but not freedom of labor, order and propriety. 
Toiling on forever is our destiny, and by all our toiling and accu- 
mulating, we never acquire, exactly, for ourselves, more than 
our board, just as the slave does ; what wo make over goes to 
others in the form of wages. 

It is plain that under our most perfect Constitution, our Union 
may comprise as well a hundred States as thirteen, provided^ 
that the people in the several. States and their subdivisions will 
mind their own public and domestic affiiirs, without troubling 
themselves with those of other people. If they will not do that 
then there will be an end of our Union, anyhow. No Confede- 
ration, and if it be made by angels, will stand such intermed- 
dling. There is the rub. And there is the mediation and go- 
between of the ladies required and in its most proper place. 

It should be distinctly understood that this society shall not 
in the least meddle with politics or disputes on slavery, but 
merely endeavor to rescue the domestic affairs South from the 
grasp of designing men. It shall put a stop to Northern supiue- 
ness, and induce on the other hand, the excited mind of the 
South (fire-eaters) to hold on, and give to a tast rising, powerful 
reaction in the North (look at Massachusetts) time to remove the 
cause of national discord, to make room for sober second thought. 
North and South. This society may in this direction join hands 
with the Mount Vernon Association. The business order will 
require a few meetings for the adoption of a few rules of organi- 
zation. The name of Martha WashixCtTOn Society has been 
proposed by a nucleus already existing for such a society since 
Nov, 21. It was calculated for New-York and Brooklyn. 

The right spirit is now moving. Patriotic clergymen are 
speaking the Word. They will favor this Society. We want 
now action, speedy action, determined action. We know the 
cause of our embarrassments, let us remove it at once. The 
honest, patriotic press will, with alacrity, support this move- 
ment, and the abolitionists will, we hope, not forget the courtesy 
and respect due to the ladies and mothers of families". 



11 

A gentleman, as influential, as patriotic and generous, who 
will support this movement, wrote about it ; that this society 
might do much good and no harm, but that it must be moved 
by the impulse of the ladies. Perfectly true. The idea of 
forming such a society originated Avlth a lady. We have tried 
to pen it down, but would not appear with those very prosaic, 
but well-meant letters, before the public if we had no experience 
of our own of their great influence in such things. Without it 
society would be a sorry afi'air, and among other things the 
Christian church not be what it is; Who has bestowed atten- 
tion upon the history of the struggle of the Italians for that what 
we are about to demolish (thanks to a few designing men North 
and South) viz : a national government — will have noticed that 
women had an immense influence in its flnal success. The 
papers reported lately a stirring address of Garibaldi to them. 
The American women always were patriotic and often heroic. 
Women often ruled the destinies of empires. The courage of 
Maria Theresa alone saved once Austria. TIow queenly rules 
Victoria Great Britain. 

Those ladies now who are moved by the spirit of patriotism 
and wish to join this society, will please send their card under 
address : " Martha Washington Society,-'' to the Brooklyn Post 
Office. The i^ew-York Post Office may be also selected. 

If the present most disastrous, most unnecessary and, it must 
be said, most silly crisis, shall cease, and the new administration 
become a fact, the Union must be preserved and the secession 
movement stopped. Secessions finally will and must happen, 
come what loill, if the North continues to meddle with the 
Southern domestic aff'airs, or what is the same, with the most 
vital interests of Southern society, better understood and appre- 
ciated by ladies than gentlemen. Please, then, ladies, do your 
duty. Come all and help deliver your sisters in the South for 
ever from the rudest and most wanton intruders of their homes, 
firesides, and domestic peace and happiness — the abolitionists. 

SPECTATOK. 

A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW- YEAR. 



34 W 



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